Local Angel

“Local Angel,” a film by New York-based Israeli artist Udi Aloni, is not an easy work to characterize. It’s a documentary about the root causes and present contradictions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a deeply personal odyssey of discovery, and a surreal work of art combining poetry, music, and images both beautiful and horrific. While its subtitle is “Theological Political Fragments,” the film ends by tying its many elements together in ways the viewer may not expect.

Moved by the destruction on Sept. 11 of the World Trade Center, one of the temples of capitalism, Aloni returned to Israel to grapple with the concepts of sacrifice and the sacred embedded in the history of a much more ancient edifice – the Temple Mount, a Jewish touchstone on which now sits the Moslem Dome of the Rock.